Painting Over Cracks
by be-nice-to-nerds
Summary: The timeline repairs itself, as best it can. Some cracks are just easier to fix than others. Sally Sparrow's life changes  yet doesn't  when the Doctor's actions on the Byzantium wipe the Weeping Angels and their paradox out of existence.


**This is my first, and probably only, forage into Doctor Who fandom; if only because I tend to make it a rule to have consumed all available cannon first which is somewhat difficult in a TV show that's got 14 or so days worth of airtime at least. And that's not counting various parts of the Expanded Universe. But sometimes an idea gets stuck in a writer's head and refuses to leave until it's written down - and if that idea includes the Weeping Angels, do you blame a girl for wanting to get their image out of their head as fast as humanly possible?**

**Anyway. Spoilers here for all Weeping Angel episodes as of the end of Series 5, especially 'Blink' and the end of 'Flesh and Stone'. Spoilers also for the Series 5 main arc, the finale most of all.**

**As a DW fic with all these plot elements, confusing timey-wiminess ahead. You have been warned.  
**

* * *

There is a basement. Imagine it. A basement, empty but for a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. And four statues of angels, encircling the spot under the bare bulb. Imagine it. Can you see it? Good. Careful though, don't imagine it too clearly. These creatures are dangerous, even in your head.

There are some, the lucky some, the very rare some, who say that the image of an Angel becomes an Angel in itself. They capitalise the words almost audibly, and are scorned by the luckier majority who have never come face to face with one of the Lonely Assassins. (Though really, it isn't the face to face bit you need to worry about; it's what comes next.)

There are some, others, who learn the truth but never live to tell the tales. Because the image of an Angel is quick, deadly, brilliant at what it does. One blink and you're gone.

Because those who speak of images becoming reality are madmen, and madmen are more often right than not.

If any scientist had bothered trying to research the Weeping Angels (or stayed alive long enough to do so) they would have learned the reason behind this terrifying power. Every creature needs to reproduce, even quantum beings. When you stop living at a glance, new ways of creating offspring are needed.

But that is irrelevant. All you need to know is that the image of an Angel becomes an Angel in itself. Got it? Good, and now you remember that fact. Remember. Many lives could have been saved if people had only put a bit more faith in the ramblings of madmen.

Back to the basement. The bare bulb, growing dimmer by the second. The four Angels clustered around it – tricked there, people would say (if they'd known), by a good wizard. Imagine the scene; see it in your head. Leave the edges blurry though; that way it's harmless.

Now picture the same scene – only now, the Angels are gone. Blinked out of reality, out of the picture. There one minute, gone the next. Only that isn't quite accurate, is it?

An image of an Angel becomes an Angel in itself. Remember. This is important. An image of an Angel becomes another Angel. A form of reproduction; the Angel that was captured for the image is a parent, almost. And what happens when a parent is gone? How can there be an image if the object of the image wasn't there?

Simple answer – no more children. The parent of these particular Angels, if you can call it that (well, one of them; it was in turn parent to the others), was present on a starliner in the 51st Century. A starliner called the _Byzantium_. Are you getting it now? Does it fit?

Once upon a time there was a good wizard who travelled through all of existence in a magic box. But something happened, and the magic box was destroyed. It took existence with it.

Back in the basement, the Angels blink out. It is as if they have never existed.

Because they never have.

In the now-yet-always empty room, the light bulb finally dies.

…

The course of time is a funny thing. Is it predestination, when a visiting time traveller knows exactly what will happen to you? Is there still free will when the future has already been mapped out? Or is the future – is time itself – constantly in flux, in motion, changing?

Time is complicated. A wibbly wobbly ball; timey wimey. A good wizard called it that, once. Subjective, objective. Scholars from a planet, far away, that may or may not have existed, theorised that if time is the fourth dimension there is a fifth in existence to make sense of it all. True-time, they called/call/will call it. Or didn't. Did their planet even exist? Nobody knows. Greater minds than yours have cracked, trying to figure it out.

Is time already laid out in front of you, with your choices being all you have ever made and all you will do? Or is it something else? If free will exists, what about all those people in the future whose lives change-and-yet-don't because of you? They call it the butterfly effect, but that reduced things to trivialities. What about all of the people/children/beings whose life is affected by something you once did but then didn't?

Nobody cares about them, because nobody even knows they exist.

They don't.

…

Even psychopaths make good things happen. Even good wizards undo these events.

They say the course of time flows onwards, as close to reality as it can get. But remove even one person – remove even one Angel – from an equation and things change. Without the two time travellers stuck in 1969, Sally Sparrow's life changes.

It's 2007. She's in an old, abandoned house, taking photographs. In a room a piece of dangling wallpaper catches her eye. She comes in with the camera for a close up – and a nice close up it turns out to be, too – and notices some markings on the wall, extending underneath the paper.

The marking looks like the letter B, but when Sally Sparrow rips back the paper it's just a trick of the light. She shrugs it off, laughs at her own folly and keeps exploring the house, ignoring the nagging feeling that something else should have happened.

There's no statue in the garden. Sally Sparrow catches herself feeling faint surprise at the fact, and wonders at it. Maybe it's the type of garden that feels like it needs a statue, she thinks. Yes – a nice, slightly creepy, stone angel.

…

Even the destruction of reality takes time. The cracks spread outwards, slowly. With each step (Subjective, not objective - remember) the universe rewrites itself, each time a slightly smaller place. Nobody notices. Why should they? To them, the world is the same as it has always been.

An objective view of time and space must create some serious headaches.

…

Kathy Nightingale never reaches 1920. A whole family tree branching outwards for centuries is removed because she never met one man. In Hull, the boy she was due to marry married someone else, a girl who had been pining after him for years. In turn, the girl did not marry the person she did-but-didn't.

New children were born, but many others – more - never were. Hundreds of people never existed because of the actions of a good wizard.

They say that the Weeping Angels feed off the potential energy of a life never lived. They never remember that they open new probabilities, as well.

…

There are some people, treated as crazy even by the madmen, who hypothesise that not all Angels are psychopaths. They are very rare, for good reason; most who are not wary enough of the Lonely Assasins end up lonely in the past.

Never too far into the past, though, and that's where the theory comes from. If all of them were total monsters, why stop at a few decades, a century? Why always to places where it's not too hard for the time misplaced to survive?

There are people who reason, not wrongly, that the Weeping Angels are as varied in personality as other species are. That they range from complete sadists to those who try to be kind to their victims. There are no Angels that don't hunt, of course. Every creature needs to survive.

Who's heard of a predator emphasising with its prey, anyway? Every so often you hear stories of a fascination, but nothing else. Why should Angels be any different?

…

The timeline always finds ways to repair itself, people say. Kathy and Sally end up in the old house, anyway. The knock on the door was only imagination, hyper-tensed senses in a strange environment. Sally can't rid herself of the feeling that something should have happened, anyway.

She never meets Billy Shipton. Larry, she does, in as embarrassing a way as she did-but-didn't. They end up together anyway. Kathy is mortified, as is natural. She dreams, sometimes, of a man from time past who doesn't stop following her.

The timeline repairs itself, as best it can.

Some repairs are just easier to make than others.

…

Two time travellers carry on, unaware that something was supposed to happen. The cracks in reality are a lifetime away, but they still cast shadows backwards.

Later, much later, a lifetime later, a good wizard catches himself remembering two different events. He notes this down for further inspection; it gets almost-lost-but-not-quite in the realms of his mind.

Even the destruction of reality has laws, you know. Time travellers are immune to its effects, unless the destruction affects part of their own personal timeline. But what happens if it's both, and caused by them as well?

The laws of time are hard to keep track of, sometimes. So the good wizard sits there with two versions of the same thing in his head and tries to figure out what's going on.

He never bothers to check his magical box. Good wizards never do.

…

Larry Nightingale never finds the DVD Easter Egg with the man on it. He finds other things to occupy his time instead – other pastimes, other clues to figure out. None are as interesting; nothing catches his attention quite so much as the mystery that never was. He gets the sense of something missing, but he doesn't quite know what.

Later-but-earlier he survives another year that wasn't; where flying spheres take over the earth. He doesn't remember that either.

…

Sally Sparrow never likes statues.

She can't stop looking at them either, and is always surprised when she blinks and they stay exactly where they were before.

She doesn't know why.

…

Once upon a time there was a good wizard who travelled through all of existence in a magic box. But something happened, and the magic box was destroyed. It took existence with it.

Once upon a time there was a good wizard whose magic box was destroyed. Once upon a time all of creation was destroyed.

Once upon a time this good wizard was locked up in an impregnable prison for the most dangerous being in the cosmos. It was him, of course, which just goes to show that history is written by the victors. For every civilisation's hero there's another's victim, and this wizard was as feared as he was honoured. It didn't last, of course – he was a hero, after all.

Once upon a time there was a good wizard who sacrificed himself to set all of creation back to rights. Everything that had fallen in the cracks came back, the good and the bad.

Once upon a time there was a little girl who grew up into a young woman. She remembered the wizard, and the wizard came back. But that's a story for another time.

Do you remember the basement? Empty, isn't it, except for a single dim bulb in the roof. Imagine it, clearly.

Now imagine the basement again, only this time with a stone circle of Angels. It is as if they have always been there.

Because they always have.

…

The times that never were have now never been. Confused yet? You should be. Your language is missing far too many tenses to talk about time with any clarity.

There was a time with Angels, and a phone box, and a DVD Easter Egg that made no sense. There was a time with Kathy Nightingale in Hull, and her grandson who knocked on the door of an old house seconds after she left. There was a time with Billy Shipton and time travellers and 1969.

There was a time when none of this had ever happened, while the magic box exploded and the lights slowly vanished from the sky.

There was a time, after the battle was won and the good wizard was victorious again, when the first time happened, again.

The good wizard has three sets of memories now, a time traveller's prerogative. No one else knows the difference.

…

There was/is/will be a time when Angels walked the earth. There was also a time when they never were, and they know this. Quantum-locked creatures have always been particularly time sensitive.

Stopping the explosion brought everything back. You can't choose. Who gives you the right to, anyway?

The Weeping Angels are back; the Lonely Assasins are back. And they want revenge.

And _we_ want revenge.

When you see the Doctor (and you will see him, I'll make sure of that) give him a message from me, will you? That isn't a question, by the way. It's an order.

Don't bother trying to turn around. We are fast, faster than you can imagine.

It won't do you any good.


End file.
